seeing signs

Today

looking up at the pale dusk sky

I see a flock of cranes

come from nowhere 

and gone 

before I can dredge up

the memory

of when I saw them last. 

Making portents of birds

is an ancient habit.

In another country 

in a different life

the sky would fill with bats

as evening neared

and I had to learn to see them 

not as warning 

but as fact

like tides 

like the coming of night. 

For the zoroastrians

who return to air 

after death 

a birdless sky is a karmic loss.

The absence of the omen

an omen still. 

If I too

may find meaning

in the birds

perhaps the cranes are

a sign of better things

Sudden lightness.

Unforeseen joy.

Things that know when to leave

and when to arrive.